The Easy Way
by Garmonbozia
Summary: Dying was the simplest thing in the world. Getting rid of all the people who would never allow you to die... that's another matter entirely. The hardest work Jim did before the Fall was getting the other players to heed their exit lines. [A birthday present, for somebody called Zoe, who has a great friend called Eden. Sorry it's such a sad thing - I blame this bloody weather]


People are always asking me-

Actually, y'know what, no. No, that's bollocks and I'm not going to start this off in lies. _Nobody_ has _ever_ asked me what the hardest part of dying was. Except for me; I've asked myself a couple of times. Mostly to distract from the terrible realities of being dead, but Em-Tee-Cee on that one, folks…

The point is, it's an interesting fecking question with an interesting fecking answer and somebody _should_ have thought to ask it by now. For lack of anyone around me with an interesting or questioning mind – or maybe just without the balls to as much as mention my little holiday to see Eurydice – I'm going to answer it anyway. I need to. I need to see the answer out there and have it understood. Or rejected. Reject it if you want, tell me I've lost it, stupidest thing you've ever heard. Tell me that, if it's true. Don't be scared of little old me. You can say what you really think. No harm's going to come to you, promise. Cross my heart.

So here it is, the answer to life's big question, the one no one thought to ask.

The hardest part of dying, by far, was being _allowed_ to die. More planning went into clearing the stage than into the Tower Hill job and that's not even a joke. Tower Hill was well easier. I had help with that. I had people gathered around me.

I remember one particular lunchtime, and they'd all gathered.

Well, Danielle had been there since the night before. I'm not sure she'd moved at all, actually. She'd been smoking in trembling shock by the window when I turned in and she was there when I got up doing the same thing. I had thought it wise to break the news to her first. It turned out to be the right decision. She got stuck on a pale, raging loop of, "_You're_ going to steal the Crown Jewels?", and, "What do you _mean_ they're not leaving the Tower?" I counted her through the seven stages of grief, in fact. But that would be a harrowing tale enfolded within a harrowing tale. We won't go through that now, if you don't mind.

Anyway, she'd gotten over it enough to start analysing the security for me – dull-eyed and silent, but she was doing it nonetheless.

Then there was the Angel, who against all the laws of a loving God and even the basest creature's desire to survive and further itself, was teasing Dani. "Crown jewels is sort of a once-an-era thing, isn't it?" And her arm was viciously pinched, hard enough to leave a little purple rose bounded in broken red veins where the fingernails had all but met through her flesh. "Like, even in a couple of years, if you wanted to do it your way, you couldn't, because it'll sort of have been done." Burning eyes turned on her, and I swear I could smell smouldering flesh. And yet the idiot little mouth was opening again, and were it not that Moran stepped in and swooped her away from it all I might have feared for her life. "What?" she giggled against him. "I was just thinking how sad it is for her."

"Not half as sad," he said, "as I'll be, our kid, if I'm having to peel bits of you off the walls, so sit down and shut your mouth."

He dropped her on the couch, and from right across the room I heard Milverton shift as far away as the armchair would let him. Bless him. In so many ways he's like a big child. As soon as he meets something he doesn't understand, he has to revile it. And what with the Angel being insane and all, and therefore essentially unpredictable, unreadable, that's the very worst thing he can possibly imagine.

So there I was in the middle of this. Asking Charlie what my chances were at trial, and the best way to fix them. Asking Moran for the inside line on what hitters and guard dogs were likely to be sent to Baker Street. Asking the Angel to go round the best of the pawn shops and fetch back the biggest diamond solitaire she could find, because I didn't want to be asking Dani for anything else. There I am, in the middle of this fine council, and being well counselled and thinking to myself…

_I have to get rid of _all_ of you_.

This was an unfamiliar feeling. Until right there and then, it had never occurred to me that there were people who would not _allow_ me to die. I knew they'd mourn. I knew it would hurt them.

But sitting round that table with one that could no more than mutter, and one who kept breaking out his best war stories, and one of them realizing he really wasn't good enough to fix an entire jury… It had never before occurred to me that they might _interfere_. Just ordering them not to, that might not be enough.

There would be no council over my suicide. That would have to be entirely private. And I couldn't even let these people suspect.

It was like watching them disappear.

Charlie was easy. He'd already outlived his purpose anyway. There was no way he was getting me a Not Guilty verdict as quickly as I needed it. He covered it up, he was really trying, pushing hard. But it wasn't going to happen. We both knew that. I went and found myself another blackmailer, a better one. One little jury was barely the bat of a lash for him. But he wasn't going to do it for free, of course. I fed him Charlie, and Charlie pissed off to avoid the heat. Ironically, I think he ended up in Florida. Haven't kept up with him since then. I hope he found himself some nice rich widow and retired.

Yeah, Charlie was easy. Charlie had only been around for a couple of years, though. The Angel had only been around for eight, nine months but that was different. I'd built that, I was invested in that. Charlie was easy.

After that it got to be more difficult.

I was starting to plan it. Starting to think of the best way to do it. When Danielle stopped in one Saturday morning, and found me blowing up packets of stage-blood in the bath, I knew she had to go.

"What's all this in aid of?" she asked of my Psycho shower-scene recreation.

"Just messing about with something for Holmes. Don't worry about it, probably won't come to anything. Come through to the kitchen, I'll tell you why I called you over."

"You didn't call me."

Which is why she had to go, do you see? She'd seen one vaguely suspicious incident. She'd seen me with reddened corn syrup on my face and shirt. That was enough. She'd be hunting for an explanation now. Unless properly distracted.

"Well, I was about to." And I _almost_ began to make the coffee for the two of us. But then, I never brew when there's an underling about to do it for me. I remembered to call in the Angel to take care of that before I could rouse Dani's too-sharp mind any further. "You know how I owe you one?"

"…Which one? Be specific."

"For the Tower job."

"Oh," she muttered, like she was still flayed all over and I'd just flung a shower of salt at it. "_Yes_?"

"Yeah, well, I've figured out what I want to do immediately after Holmes."

"Ooh, very impressive. Because you haven't thought of _anything_ else for months now, you do know that?"

"We're closer to the end. I can think of after. And I can think, because I owe you, that you might need to start work on this. Take the Paris flat, long as you need it. And do this right, don't rush it."

"Paris?" She perked up. Head full of art and shopping and macaroons and French men, she started to look interested again. "What am I going to Paris for?"

"The Mona Lisa, if you want it." There was some arguing. There was some 'are you serious' and some 'I'll stay 'til after Holmes'. I think that swimming pool, how close it got there, was still too fresh in her memory. But she couldn't resist it. The Mona Lisa. Right after the Crown Jewels. She was imagining, already, that I might toss her Fort Knox in the immediate aftermath and we'd make it a trilogy, robbing the Western World one landmark at a time. I hinted, I wove, I let her believe it. I drove her to the airport.

Thinking to myself, _two down, two to go_.

And this, I have to confess it, is where I made my mistake. Because there was only Seb and the Angel left, wasn't there? And those were the two that could follow orders and didn't think too much about it.

I thought I could keep them. Thought I could hold onto them up until the end. It was the night before and I was still making changes.

Don't know what I was thinking when I decided to have Moran watching Bart's roof. No idea. Whether or not my death would be real, I was taking my best mate to watch it. Couldn't tell him, couldn't help him… Don't know what I was thinking.

That night before, we're having one last drink. Of course, he didn't _know_ it was the last. And Moran looks round and says to me, "Don't worry."

Me? Worry? "Worry about what?"

"Holmes. I'm there, if he tries to pull anything messy. Just give the nod, mate, we'll bring it all down."

I text him the following morning telling him to trade places with Novichenko. An outside force with no interest in me other than getting paid, that was one gun I could trust to stay trained on John Watson. I sent Seb to focus his sights on Lestrade instead.

Even tried to do it without lying to him. But about four seconds after the message sent, there was the phone call, predictable as six coming after five. "Why? What's happened? What are you getting me to swap out for?"

"Because the venue's changed. I'll be there. It's a bit shit as regards Watson, I admit that, but Sherlock's leading the dance, mate. Nothing I can do about it."

That settled him. They tell me it was a good half-hour before he heard the news. I'm sure he was pissed off with me. But I hope, later, when he thought about it, he realized why I'd sent him away. I hope he did, or that somebody explained it to him.

Sherlock ought to be grateful to me. I made it so easy for him. He didn't have a choice in the matter. Nobody knew it was coming except for him; all he had to do was keep from telling anyone.

I remember him standing at the edge, and me telling him that everyone he cared about would die. He named them off. Checking, like I might have forgotten somebody, like that would make all the difference. I let him. That desperate grasping, I understood it. I let him. He counted them off by name and in my head, I was counting too. He said Lestrade and I thought Charlie. He said Hudson and I thought of Danielle. He said John and I thought of Moran. And when we both stopped naming, Molly Hooper was in his head, knowing that whether he lived or died he was losing her. In my head, I had the Angel.

The Angel was at the bottom of the stairs to Bart's roof, near the last lift. She was wearing stolen scrubs, and had a gurney with a full-size white sheet over it. The arrangement was, as soon as Holmes jumped, I'd peel myself off the concrete, stagger down the stairs and pretend to be a corpse beneath the sheet. She could wheel me out of there to the safety of a bought-and-paid-for ambulance and then we were gone.

It just wasn't fair. To take that secret and drop it into the lap of a girl who was not entirely in possession of her own mind even? Nah. Not right. And not safe for me, but I promise that's not what I was thinking of. Scout's honour.

So after Holmes jumped, I stayed exactly where I was. It was easier, anyway. For a fake shot, it had done enough damage. Both ears blown, powder-burns to the mouth and throat, disturbed vision. The headache, and this is no word of exaggeration, lasted approximately six weeks. Staying flat on my bloodied back was definitely the sensible decision.

It was about five minutes before I felt footsteps on the concrete. Couldn't hear them, missed the creak of the door popping open. But she came creeping towards me on the balls of her feet; I could feel that the steps were tiny.

The voice was small too. And far away, on the other side of deep water. I heard the shape of words more than the words themselves. "Sir?" and I let my head loll back when she picked me up by the shoulders. "No, no, no…" Lots of that. Lots of 'no'. Following on, as she began to accept the inevitable fact that I was no more, lots of, "_Please_ no." She tried to take a pulse. Being a mad, uneducated thing, she was looking in the wrong place, too far around the neck, and not pressing hard enough anyway. Then the crying. As close as I got to knowing I was missed and mourned, the crying. She hung over me sobbing until something caught her attention and she ran. Cops, orderlies, I don't know. The Angel hid, and probably watched, as I was taken away from her.

And that made it four-for-four, if I'm counting it right.

This, then, is a cautionary tale. To all of you that dream of short sharp shots. Long falls and short ropes, pleasant walks over unforgiving precipices. Razors, rivers, acids, drugs, to paraphrase the famous lady. A cautionary tale, and here is the message made small and manageable; dying is the easy part. Getting there is much more difficult. Sending all those people away, knowing what's going to happen to them afterward, that's more difficult. Do you understand?

And as for coming back… But that's another story, and for another time.


End file.
